Produce people, let’s face it: Avocados are a produce department powerhouse. In a lot of areas I travel to, they are a top five or top three commodity, only behind bananas and berries.
Seemingly everyone is eating avocados these days, in one form or another. They are an extremely versatile piece of fruit and can be enjoyed in a myriad of ways.
How and where you merchandise avocados is a key to your success for sure, and luckily avocados pair with many things in the department — and the store. They are an awesome basket and sales builder, and not just for the produce department.
Avocado avenues
Where will you drive home awesome sales with this versatile fruit in your produce departments? The simple answer is everywhere. But more specifically, avocados will do best when merchandised in at least these three ways:
- Tomato sections. Add a nice splash of color to the sea of red, plus suggest avocado as an ingredient to tomato salad. Tie in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, basil and, if possible, fresh mozzarella.
- Tropical sections. As a tropical fruit, merchandising avocados in the tropical section just makes sense, right? And as a high-demand fruit, placing avocados here can open the exposure of other more exotic fruits to customers, just by the sheer traffic tropicals will now have with avocados in the mix. Some consumers may have never seen a dragon fruit, rambutan or passionfruit. This is a way to get your customer eager to try new things and build impulse sales.
- Standalone displays. These are one of my favorite types of displays because they’re moveable and can be built in high-traffic areas, or anywhere, really, in the department. Building large displays of avocados is a surefire way to drive volume of avocados. Plus, they are a super impressive visual and offer the chance to bring in other tie-ins to the display.
As a tropical fruit, avocados do not do well when merchandised in refrigerated cases. Merchandising and storing them longterm in cold cases will affect the quality of fruit and shelf life, as well as slow down the ripening process. They will do best when merchandised on dry counters and stored in backroom areas.
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On the flip side, avocados will ripen quickly if left on warm docks or in warmer backrooms. Temperature is definitely something to think about when you are setting up storage areas.
Ripe and ready
The biggest key to the success of avocado sales is making sure that you always have ripe fruit on display. A lot of avocado shoppers are in search of ripe fruit to consume rather quickly, most within the same day and some even immediately after purchase. So, having ripe fruit available for them is important to satisfy their avocado craving!
Learn more: All about avocado, the commodity
With some stores, this goal is as easy to accomplish as rotating the riper fruit on top of the display. Otherwise, customers will dig around to find that perfect piece of fruit. Other stores keep ripe and unripe fruit separate with appropriate signage, with some even going as far as to sticker the fruit that is ripe and ready to go. This is a great method for shoppers who don’t know how to pick out a ripe avocado. These stickers are usually available through dry goods suppliers.
One easy way to ensure that you have ripe fruit at all times is to set up an in-store ripening program. It’s a simple, easy process. All you will need is the avocados, a banana or apple, and a sheet of plastic (trash bags, or even better, the plastic liners of a banana box). Check it out:
- Identify your needs for ripe fruit.
- Place the desired number of boxes in your storage areas.
- Take a few avocados out of the box and replace it with a couple bananas or apples, which produce ethylene and help speed up the ripening process.
- Cover with plastic all sides of the box. If you are using a standard plastic bag, cut a few holes in it to allow some heat and ethylene to escape. Plastic banana liners already have these holes.
- Monitor ripeness daily, and pack out as needed. Its important to closely monitor these boxes of avocados because you don’t want fruit to over-ripen, causing shrink for sure.
Build the basket
Avocados are so versatile and an ingredient in many recipes. They go perfectly in salads, on burgers (even in the winter months). The creamy, buttery fruit makes a perfect spread for morning toast and, of course, avocados are the main ingredient in guacamole.
Display a case stack or basket of avocados next to your salad areas and burger sections or create an awesome one-stop guac shop with avocados as the star, paired with the ingredients, such as: red onions, jalapeños, cilantro, limes, tomatoes, garlic and — don’t forget the tortilla chips. What time is it? It’s guac o’ clock!
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Brian Dey is the senior merchandiser and natural stores coordinator for Ephrata, Pa.-based wholesaler Four Seasons Produce and a multiple category and overall merchandiser winner in PMG's Produce Artist Award Series seasonal display contests.